


Better When You're Not There

by kankrisredsweater



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, PWP, Sadstuck, Smut, angsty sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-19
Updated: 2013-09-19
Packaged: 2017-12-27 01:33:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/972751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kankrisredsweater/pseuds/kankrisredsweater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You quickly peek at him from beneath your eyelashes. His thick dark hair is wonderfully mussed, and you think that maybe, in another life at another time, your heart might have skipped a beat. But not now, never now.</p><p>You wonder when he got so objectively beautiful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better When You're Not There

Your name is Dave Strider, and your mind is curiously blank. You usually think a mile a minute, witty retorts and useless facts whirring around your brain like hyperactive hummingbirds. But right now, nothing. Your headspace is experiencing a rare stretch of silence.

His fingers hook into your hair at the base of your neck. You can feel his fingertips, soft but firm, as they glide over your scalp. You suspect that the guttural noise that issues from your throat is a reactionary habit as opposed to a vocalization of actual pleasure. The sound itself is muffled against his lips, pressing warmly against your own.

You crack one eye open, acutely aware that the absence of your shades puts you at a disadvantage. His own eyes, framed with dark, impossibly long lashes, are still closed. You’re glad for this fact; you know that one look into those soul-searching pools of cobalt blue would sent you spiraling into ruin. The tip of your nose is brushing lightly against the clear bronzed skin of his cheek; he smells clean, like laundry detergent.

You close your eye again. One glance is all you’ve allowed yourself.

You bite down softly on his swollen lower lip, running your tongue lightly along the captured flesh. Your hands are resting on his waist, and you can feel him shudder ever so slightly. You are curiously unaffected, unattached. You know you’re good at this, but the normal feeling of empowerment, of sensual manipulation, just isn’t there. This bothers you, but not enough to keep you from slipping your thumbs into the waistband of his jeans and tugging slightly, teasingly, at the denim. You have no intention of removing them yet.

He sighs through his nose and carefully drags his lips away from your mouth, brushing them fleetingly along your jaw towards your ear. He’s pressed himself flush against your body, and you instinctively tilt your head sideways as he leans into the offered flesh of your neck, nipping gently at the patch of skin just below your earlobe. Your breath hitches automatically but you make no noise. Your hands slip up the back of his t-shirt, trapping him close to you. But your fingernails don’t embed into the heated skin of his back and your hips don’t arch forward to meet his.

You carefully lift his shirt, exposing his lower back to the air. He takes your cue and removes his mouth from your neck for just long enough to shrug the soft cotton over his head and onto the floor. You quickly peek at him from beneath your eyelashes. His thick dark hair is wonderfully mussed, and you think that maybe, in another life at another time, your heart might have skipped a beat. But not now, never now.

You wonder when he got so objectively beautiful.

Puberty had done him well, and you feel a faint twinge of regret that you weren’t around to watch his voice deepen, his chest and shoulders broaden, his arms thicken. Perhaps if you had, you might feel differently right now. You must have missed out on a lot during your years of radio silence.

He must have learned how to kiss, too, because you find yourself surprised and a little impressed with how artfully he flits his tongue over your skin. It almost makes you want to lean your head back and sigh into his touch, to melt beneath his lips and fingertips. Almost.

His hands, square and strong and purposeful, stray to the third button on your shirt. (The top two had been unbuttoned to begin with.) He doesn’t fumble with the material like you half-expected him to; you think about who he had been ten years ago, a gawky fourteen-year-old who was terribly invested in the idea of being straight and who you once loved so desperately that it nearly broke you. You cough slightly, banishing that thought and focusing instead on the way he is pushing your shirt off your shoulders and down your arms, his palms flat against your skin. The burgundy garment falls to the floor, leaving you bare from the waist up.

He pulls back and makes a noise that you think might be appreciation. You chance another glance at him through half-lidded eyes. His hands have clasped yours ever so lightly, and he brings one up to his face. His lips press to your knuckles softly, and the gesture is embarrassingly intimate. You shut your eyes tight again, feeling your face burn. His mouth travels slowly, lazily, up your arm and to your shoulder, his hands finding purchase on your hips.

You don’t stop him as he gently nudges you towards the bed, and you don’t say anything as you lower yourself onto the blankets. You recognize one of them from his childhood bedroom, white and grey and covered with blank-faced ghosts. It sat in the background of all your video calls. You had spent hours imagining what it would be like to lay him back against those sheets, splay your hands over his bare chest, dip your head into the crevice of his neck, acquaint yourself with the contours of his chest and hipbones.

You appreciate the irony of the fact that it is you who are laid against these sheets in the present time, and it is he who is learning the hills and valleys of your own body, adding his own marks to the geography of your chest and abdomen. It is he who is nibbling softly at the expanse of pale flesh between your navel and the button of your pants, following the trail of wispy blond hair that curls down your stomach.

You realize that you have begun to harden. Normally, the surge of blood to your groin would have sent your head spinning, but you are surprised to find that it has been almost completely unnoticed. His mouth hovers uncertainly over your zipper for a few brief moments before he snags the fly between his prominent front teeth and pulls it gently towards your feet. You raise your eyebrows. Someone must have taught him a few tricks.

You wonder who that someone might have been.

Not that you know anything about the sort of people he spends time with. It was due to a complete twist of fate that he is currently unfastening your pants and sliding them down your legs. A chance meeting on the street, some clumsily exchanged greetings, and a _hey, we should get coffee sometime and catch up_ has somehow developed into the current situation, wherein you are draped over his bedspread and he is kneeling between your spread legs, ghosting his lips teasingly along your inner thigh. You remain still. Normally you would be writhing, clutching the bedsheets, moaning with abandon, putting on a show. Now, you are quiet, breathing through your nose in little puffs of air, eyes closed to the world, one hand dragging through your own feather-soft hair because you refuse to thread your fingers into his.

His mouth envelopes you softly and sweetly and you let out the smallest of sighs. It’s a change of pace from your usual lazy left-handed ministrations, and you hazily appreciate that fact. The suction is so careful and perfect that it aches, but you know that the moment you give yourself over to the pleasure will be the moment that destroys you.

It has always been this way. You are fragile like spun glass and he is well-meaning but clumsy, the oblivious bull in the china shop of your heart. You vividly remember the last time you let him in this far, the whole reason you ceased communication in the first place. You’d always been in love with him and his silly carefree smile and his friendly naiveté. In retrospect, you shouldn’t have expected any other outcome; he was overwhelmingly unprepared for discovering the nature of your feelings for him and completely incapable of reciprocating. He didn’t actively remove you from his life, but talking to him became strained and uncomfortable, so gradually you stopped. It helped that you’d never met him in person and you didn’t have to see him, but your heart hurt whenever you logged onto your chat client to find that he was offline, because he was never offline. But you learned to put it – and him – out of your heart and mind.

You have been so distracted with your own thoughts that you haven’t been paying him much attention, but you realize that you knees are dangling over his shoulders and he is poised to enter you. You hope he’s prepared himself aptly, but if you’re being honest with yourself, you know that it won’t matter; it is going to hurt either way, both physically and viscerally.

Slowly, gently, he fills you. Your vision sparks and tears prick at the corners of your eyes, but you don’t really mind the pain. He begins to move inside you, almost imperceptibly at first, but you remain stoic. You still haven’t opened your eyes. It occurs to you that you don’t want to see him like this, open and vulnerable. His breath leaves his throat in little pants, which you think you would find endearing if you could.

“You’re so quiet,” he breathes, and it’s almost a whine, and it breaks the silence that has hung over you since the moment his lips touched yours. His hands brace your hips, guiding himself gently, but his squeezes them insistently when you don’t respond to his comment. You want to say something, anything, but the words run dry on the tip of your tongue and you’re floundering. One of his hands wraps loosely around you, stroking in time with his thrusts, and you gasp, throwing one arm over your face, half-obscuring it, hoping that the motion satisfies his desire for a reaction. It must have, because he doesn’t speak again.

You don’t know how long you remain in that limbo, your hips passively moving in tandem with his aggressive ones, but you can hear his gasps becoming more ragged and you mentally steel yourself. He ups the tempo just a few ticks and you bite down on your own lower lip so hard that you taste blood.

He comes with a cry, and the sound tears you apart; you can hear ecstasy and relief and affection and every other emotion that you know you’re never going to feel when you’re with him. You give a dry sob and follow him into orgasm, releasing all of the feelings that you have hidden away for so long, spilling over his hand and your own stomach.

He eases out of you, knees wobbling slightly as he crosses over to the bathroom to find something with which to clean you off. You lay frozen on your back, not trusting yourself to move. You flinch slightly as a wet cloth grazes your stomach, cool and refreshing against your flushed skin. You can feel the backs of his fingertips brush the side of your cheek softly, almost lovingly, before he returns to the bathroom.

You become aware of just how openly naked you are, which makes you weirdly uncomfortable. You aren’t usually so self-conscious after your various bedroom romps, totally content to lounge around openly and unabashedly, but this time is different. While he is occupied, you try sitting up, your head only spinning slightly. You open your eyes long enough to locate your boxers on the floor and pull them up your legs.

He steps back into the bedroom, having pulled his own boxers back on. He must have done that while your eyes are still closed. You get your first good look at him since he first leaned in to kiss you; he is still lovely, his flushed tanned skin stretched over sinewy muscles and an inscrutable expression on his face. You can feel his eyes on you but you don’t meet his gaze. Rather, you test your legs, standing up after a few moments and ignoring the bright lance of pain that shoots up from your tailbone. He watches as you slip your pants back on and button them.

“Leaving so soon?” he asks, a smile on his face. You sort of want to cry; he has no idea what he’s doing, and you have no words to explain to him just why this whole situation makes you feel nauseous. You give a noncommittal shrug and retrieve your shirt from the floor. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see him look down at the floor. He knows something is wrong, but he is as helpless to fix it as you are.

You are fully clothed, having fetched your shades from the dresser by the door where he had laid them carefully. You feel instantly at peace once the concealing accessory rests on your nose, shielding you from the intensity of his stare. He wants you to say something. You suppose he is just going to have to be disappointed.

You palm your front pocket to find your phone and car keys. Once you are assured that you are in possession of everything you brought to his apartment, you make for the door.

“Dave?” he calls. You stop, your blood running ice-cold. You figured that he would want to talk to you. You suppose you can’t really blame him.

“Yeah?” you acknowledge, surprised at the hollowness of your voice. You barely recognize it.

There is a long silence. You know that he is trying to formulate the correct words, the words that will make you stay, the words that will return you to him. You know that there are no such words, and you feel a pang of regret in your heart, a regret that hasn’t plagued you in a very long time and that you’ve tried very hard to forget about.

“...call me?” John offers hesitantly. You want to. Oh, God, you want to. You would give anything to crawl back into that bed, to cuddle with him forever, to brush his dumb messy hair out of his face and plant soft kisses onto his beautiful lips and lose yourself in his essence. But you can’t. It’s too late for that. It was too late for that a long time ago.

“Yeah,” you promise him as you walk out the door.

You know you won’t.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow. Lots of angst. I have no explanation. It was just sort of a thing that I needed to write. T^T  
> [Here](http://twinklyyherbert.tumblr.com) is my tumblr if you want to follow me or something!


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